Detecting specific molecules is a crucial task for medicine, biotechnology, chemical and biodefense, and environmental protection. Many new detection systems are developed every year with increasing specificity and sensitivity. These systems include the latest developments in biotechnology and nanotechnology. All of them have one common feature: they employ sophisticated and expensive equipment for the processing and/or the readout of the results.
The direct detection of blood proteins can benefit a number of scientific and clinical applications, such as in monitoring the ratio of specific protein glycation in diabetes, biomarkers for drug research and environmental monitoring, cancer diagnostics and treatment, and the like. The current clinical and laboratory measurement techniques for blood proteins are boronate affinity immunoassay, high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and capillary based systems, which are time consuming and costly.
More efficient and fast response measurement methods could greatly benefit and enhance related application areas, especially for developing the next generation of portable handheld diagnostic devices capable of real-time analysis. Several optics-based diagnostic techniques, such as near-infrared spectroscopy, polarimetry, optical coherence tomography, surface plasmon resonance (SPR), Raman and fluorescence spectroscopy have recently been investigated for monitoring blood components.